


For The Time Being

by spitecentral



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aromantic Character, Aromantic Hermione, Cupioromantic Hermione, F/M, No editing we die like mne, Psychological Trauma, Questioning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-23 00:28:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20883161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spitecentral/pseuds/spitecentral
Summary: Hermione questions her orientation, her relationship with Ron, and various other problems after the war, and finds that they might be a bit too complex to fix immediately, if they need fixing at all.





	For The Time Being

**Author's Note:**

> In the process of moving several smaller/less effort fics to AO3. Quality may vary.

It was three months after the war, three months since she and Ron had cemented their relationship, and it wasn’t working. Or it was, in a way, like a math question where you got the answer right but the method wrong; it worked, but not the way it was supposed to. 

For the most part, things were good. For now, they all slept in the burrow, the Weasleys, Harry, and her. She hadn’t managed to track her parents down to undo their amnesia yet, Harry had nowhere to go, and Fred’s loss was still too fresh for the Weasley’s to be comfortable apart. And, truth be told, she and Harry did not feel comfortable on their own yet, either. So for now, they stayed in the burrow. 

It was nice to have a stable roof above their heads again after months of camping, and especially nice to not be under constant threat of death. It was nice that they didn’t have to separate yet. It was nice that sleeping in the same bed as Ron was socially acceptable, because when she still woke up screaming, she needed someone to cling to, some reassurance that her friends weren’t dead. The physical contact was nice as well; the feeling of Ron’s arm around her shoulders or her hand in his or a stolen kiss was grounding when she couldn’t quite remember that this was real, or just whenever, really. Being able to stay as close to him as possible without anyone batting an eye was good, it really was. 

But at the same time, there was the aching hole of Harry at her side. He was there, she supposed, but he also wasn’t; he was with Ginny now, a pair, like she was with Ron. As much as touching and being with Ron was now acceptable, doing those same things with Harry was most definitely not. She understood that, she did, and it wasn’t all that different from before, but it was…

She had spent months relying on him, sleeping in the same tent, defying death with him more often than not, crying and despairing and hoping and above all relying on him, and to have that be over was strange enough, but now there was a wedge between them, and it was called ‘romance’. They had partners now, and priorities that weren’t each other, and for the first in a long, long time, she felt like she and Ron and Harry were no longer a trio, like it was no longer appropriate to spend as much time with both of them, but that she’d picked one and needed to stick with him.

But she could’ve shrugged this off, probably. After their first death defying stunt, she’d done a bit of research into trauma, and she recognized that her clinginess, her nightmares, her disassociation were trauma reactions. She knew she probably needed therapy - though where on Earth she was going to find a therapist, she didn’t know - and she was willing to consider that her upset at Harry’s newfound distance could be at least partially caused by this trauma. It probably was, in all honesty.

But there was also the true, honest fact that she did not love Ron the way he loved her. And that was the real problem, in the end. 

If she had not been in a relationship before, she might have written this off as a trauma reaction as well. Detachment from her emotions. She’d come around, she’d tell herself, if she didn’t know she’d be lying. 

Victor had been nice, and she had enjoyed his romantic attentions just as she now enjoyed Ron’s, only then her relationship had been tinted with a little less desperation and codependency. But in the end, she hadn’t felt those butterflies, hadn’t felt that extra spring in her heart that people always told her about. She’d liked Victor, certainly, but in the end, the relationship was casual to her in a way that it never was for Victor. 

With Ron it was a little more serious, but she’d known him for longer, and they’d been through much more together, so that was only to be expected. Yet still, her heart did not miss a beat, and their relationship felt slanted and sideways in a way that she knew her parents’ marriage never felt like. 

Hermione wasn’t stupid; she was the brightest witch of her generation, and she prided herself in her intellect and took comfort in knowledge. When she didn’t know what was wrong, she researched until she could identify the issue and then solve it. If she was anything, she was stubborn, and if she found a problem, she would not rest until she solved it. 

And the issue of why she did not fall in love when she really ought to was a problem. And so she researched, until she found… not a solution. But an explanation. 

“Oh,” she breathed, staring at the definition of aromanticism. Oh. That… that fit. That would explain a lot, actually. 

But even with the explanation, the problem remained. Worse, it was unsolvable. Orientations couldn’t be ‘fixed’, shouldn’t need to be fixed, and yet here she was, an aromantic in a romantic relationship, and surely, this couldn’t be right. This shouldn’t work. This needed fixing, because surely, this _couldn’t_ work, right?

But it had been working, hadn’t it? Not perfectly, but Ron hadn’t been unhappy, and neither was Hermione. There was the problem with Harry, with feeling a distance now that they were two pairs instead of a trio, but that was hardly the aromanticism’s fault, she didn’t think. 

And even if it wasn’t, she couldn’t solve it, because you couldn’t solve an orientation. Should she break up? Should she try to establish some different kind of relationship between the three of them? Should she just tell Harry to communicate with her more often, and stay in the relationship with Ron because it made her happy, even if she wasn’t doing it right?

It was complicated, probably. There were most likely a lot of factors at play. And honestly? Thinking about figuring this out was exhausting, and almost enough to make her cry.

Maybe she didn’t have to figure things out, right now. They had won a war not three months ago, and just yesterday she’d had to hold Ron as he cried over his brother’s death, and three days ago she’d talked Harry out of a panic attack, and last night Ron calmed her down after yet another nightmare, and maybe things were just too complicated right now to worry about romantic attraction or the lack thereof. 

Because at the end of the day, they were happy, now; maybe not as happy as they could be, but happy enough for now. 

Maybe she could shelf this project until later. 

So she took a deep breath, shoved the pamphlet into the drawer, and resolved to figure this out. But later. After they’d gotten some time to breath.

Things were good now. Not great. But good enough, and she was no longer being chased by death. She had the time. She’d figure it out. Later.


End file.
